Costs of Climate Change

Water management has been the centrepiece of agricultural management since the 1970s, as has been pointed out by Palanisami et al in “Managing Water Management Research: Analysis of Four Decades of Research and Outreach Programmes in India” (EPW, 27 June 2015). The article was primarily from the perspective of natural resource management. However, in the past decade, climate change has emerged as a major challenge to various stakeholders, including farmers, scientists, civil society, policymakers and administrators.

Water management has been the centrepiece of agricultural management since the 1970s, as has been pointed out by Palanisami et al in “Managing Water Management Research: Analysis of Four Decades of Research and Outreach Programmes in India” (EPW, 27 June 2015). The article was primarily from the perspective of natural resource management. However, in the past decade, climate change has emerged as a major challenge to various stakeholders, including farmers, scientists, civil society, policymakers and administrators. Agriculture has been widely recognised as one of the sectors which are most vulnerable to climate change given its dependence on environmental conditions.

The Government of India has addressed this challenge through various policy measures, the primary one being the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), which was launched in 2008. As part of the NAPCC, eight missions were launched covering various sectors. Two missions are of interest to water management policy: National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (for promoting adaptation in agriculture sector) and National Water Mission (with a goal of 20% improvement in water use efficiency through pricing and other measures). Apart from these two, the regional National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem and the cross-cutting National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change are also relevant.